This is one of those ideas that sound great on first glance but aren’t when you take a deeper look. The floor absorbs the kinetic energy that a normal floor would normally send back to the spring system that constitutes your foot, making it necessary for you to expend more energy to compensate for it, and that makes walking more tiring. Essentially, the power is created by making it harder to walk. The additional effort that is placed on the people walking is turned into energy at a very low conversion rate. The energy required to create and maintain this machine dwarfs the expected output.

so civilization doesn’t collapse from rapid population decline

Would that really be a bad thing?

There is some truth in that. But we will not be able to gather a revolutionary mass in the near future, neither in the US nor here in Europe. One thing is certain, however: under a US as Trump envisions it, any work toward that goal will become impossible, or at least life-threatening. That is why I am in favor of forming alliances with liberals to preserve room for maneuver.

Protests are powerful, especially in autocracies. This is because they undermine, in full view of everyone, a key source of legitimacy for autocrats: that they represent the true will of the people. It also undermines the instrument of power that all autocrats rely on: fear.

I am a socialist. But I would never want to live in a country like the USSR. Too authoritarian, too undemocratic, too repressive, too little freedom, too nationalistic.

With Lenin and the USSR, a right-wing interpretation of Marxism prevailed, which then spread globally and became even more problematic with Stalin.

Left-wing socialists such as Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Steinberg, and the early Lukacs therefore condemned and criticized the Soviet Union very early on. I identified with them much more.

In fact, there have probably only been three attempts to introduce a humane form of socialism: the Paris Commune, the Prague Spring, and Chile under Allende. All three were brutally destroyed. The Prague Spring by the USSR.

For some oligarchs in Russia? Great. They are now being rewarded with resources in eastern Ukraine. This is probably one of the main reasons for the war. Yes, it’s very bad for ordinary Russians. But those on top are certainly very pleased with the situation. And for American and European capitalists, the reconstruction of Ukraine will bring great business opportunities as well. Big Capital is happy.

Oh sweet child

Not here tho. No bear in sight. The bear patrol must be working like a charm!

That’s some privileged hippie bullshit. Gratitude does absolutely nothing about the problems of the world. Class consciousness, mass protests and Molotov cocktails on the other hand…

That is such a simplification that it is probably wrong.

Marx did not really concern himself with the ultimate goal of communism. His great achievement was his analysis of capitalism. Marx did not describe a slow evolution toward communism, but rather a process in which the contradictions he identified in capitalism culminate in revolution. No evolution! The few times he commented on communism, he described its prerequisites. He writes in the Communist Manifesto “In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.”

Lenin’s approach was enormously successful in some respects. After the October Revolution, the USSR underwent unprecedented industrial development, which greatly improved the living conditions of most people. In general, the argument that “it has never worked before” is very problematic. For some strange reason, communist countries have always found themselves under massive attack from capitalist countries. For example, by Hitler’s Germany or the US. Inconceivable sums of money were invested by global capital and its states to show “that communism does not work.” If it really hadn’t worked, none of that would have been necessary. That still applies today. Lenin was a right-wing, authoritarian communist and was rightly criticized for this by people like Rosa Luxemburg. But economically, things were improving so rapidly that capitalist states became increasingly concerned. The fear was so great that capitalists in the US even agreed to the New Deal. Something similar happened in Europe.

ML does not stand for Marx and Lenin, but for Marxism-Leninism. A propagandistic self-description of the system of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Another word for it is Stalinism.

Significantly more likely if you live in the USA. Not so much in big parts of the rest of the world.

Of course not. But I just can’t understand for the life of me why anyone would have a problem with the delicious food they just ate turning out to be vegan.

“Oh no, there wasn’t any animal in this delicious meal. I feel so cheated.”

Yes, and maybe the sauce was made with vegan cream and zucchini was used instead of eggplant. The only thing that matters is whether it tastes good. Why does it matter if an animal died for it?

Does it matter, or isn’t it even positive, if the deception was successful?

Why?

It is controlled by google tho

If you are using Firefox:

1. Enter the following in the address bar: about:config
2. Search for: image.webp.enabled
3. Set it to false Websites are delivering JPG/PNG instead of WebP again.

This sounds similar to the debate surrounding meat substitutes. Most people don’t give up meat because they don’t like the taste of it, but because of animal suffering or the environmental impact. The same is likely true here. The problem isn’t the Windows UI, but Microsoft’s behavior as a company. For most people, the purpose of switching is likely to be things like greater freedom, privacy, independence, or a general rejection of proprietary software and big tech. Plus, there’s the large group of people that Microsoft is trying to force into throwing away their perfectly functional PCs. In very few cases are these users likely to think that they dislike Windows itself. If Zorin’s look and feel helps them achieve the switch, then that’s great.